


Of memories and heart [Parallel Universe]

by DearCat



Series: Scraps Archive [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Aizen is a dick, Angst, Fluff, Gen, Kisuke and Kaien will make it better, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Child Abuse, non-consensual human experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23862133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DearCat/pseuds/DearCat
Summary: Kisuke had just wanted to escape the oppressive little lieutenant back at his new division but he won't complain about the results.Yes, the findings were heartbreaking but they had at least made it in time to save one.And Kisuke likes his chances better when he knows there's a game being played, especially if he is one of the pieces.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo & Shiba Kaien, Kurosaki Ichigo & Urahara Kisuke, Shiba Kaien & Urahara Kisuke
Series: Scraps Archive [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719625
Comments: 43
Kudos: 371





	Of memories and heart [Parallel Universe]

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Excuse the style, it's a little old. This new series I'm putting here are mostly works that are long enough to be worth sharing but that I haven't touched in a long while. 
> 
> So most of them are kind of doomed to stay as they are, honestly.

Kisuke owes enough to the Shiba Clan that this small favour is really nothing. It doesn’t mean he has to like it and he doesn’t but he will do what needs to be done. At this point, what they want is secondary to what needs to be done. The kid in front of him is 100 years old, so very young but there’s intelligence staring back at him from those brown eyes looking so trustfully at him. There’s much potential in him, Kisuke can see why Aizen wants him so bad. Kisuke won’t allow it to happen. 

The child in front of him barely reaches Kisuke’s waist, spiky orange hair and all. There’s a white long-sleeved shirt that Kisuke knows covers up the silver thin scars on his arms. It sends a pang of pain through Kisuke’s chest, it’s on him. All of this is on him. But maybe, if he does right by this one child, he can begin paying back for it. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot. So it’s with a cold determination that he gives them enough room to make their way inside.

It’s the child that steps in first. Brown eyes looking at everything curiously and the kid goes on to explore, small hands touching everything they can reach with careful moves. A part of Kisuke feels relief at seeing some normal childlike behaviour. Kaien comes next, tiredness clear on his face and a little bag thrown over his shoulder as he looks worriedly at the much smaller Shiba. 

This ordeal has managed to unite them when various decades of friendship with the man’s younger sister hadn’t. Both of them pretend not to notice how Ichigo keeps looking back at Urahara as he explores, making sure the man is still there. It would be cute if it wasn’t so sad.

The look on Kaien’s face is a mixture of guilt, pain, and worry. Kisuke can’t blame him. They had found the child in a small cell inside a lab hidden in the edges of Rukongai. So far away that they wouldn’t have even investigated had it not been for the strange but powerful spiritual energy showing up in Kisuke’s machines like a beacon. Steady and just high enough to be noticeable. It had been mostly a combination of good luck and boredom that had led them to find the boy.

Kisuke had found the signal interesting enough and so he had taken a small team of his squad and gone to investigate, both because it was curious and to get away from his lieutenant. A lieutenant who didn’t want him around, found him lacking in every way possible and had no problem saying it to his face. And really, Kisuke had been Omni, he had been in charge of the Maggot’s Nest. He knows she’s in pain and lashing out and he tried to be as patient as possible but that does not mean he will allow it eternally. 

Kaien had already been there with a team of his own, dealing with the increase of hollows in the area and investigating the reason behind the increase. Kisuke had told the lieutenant of his findings and how he suspected both things were connected. After all, hollows are attracted to strong sources of spiritual energy. They might as well join forces for it, fewer chances of either squad getting in the way of the other that way. So they had gone on to where the beacon was coming from. 

Neither of them had expected what they found. 

A lab with human and hollow subjects, some dead, some alive. Some still open on operating tables. And so many children. All in small cages, “children-sized” a cynical voice in Kisuke’s head had stated. It had painted a horrifying picture. Kisuke and Kaien had both hurried in search of survivors with the sort of determination that hides desperation. 

By the tenth little body, Kisuke’s hands had been steady only due to good training and sheer force of will. Kaien had grief so clearly written on his face that it was almost painful to watch, most of their subordinates were either crying or puking. They continue to search for any sign of life anyway. It was the first time Kisuke felt pride in his own people. 

There had only been two more cages left by the time Kisuke made it all the way to Ichigo. The child had just sat there, in his small cage, looking at Kisuke with yellow eyes; covered in his own blood. Orange hair vaguely visible under it and small hands playing absently with a small strip of ripped cloth. It had been all the hope they had needed at the time. Whatever the result, at least they had saved one. 

When Kisuke had cautiously opened the door, the child simply followed the movement with his eyes but had done nothing to either reach out or move away. And when Kisuke had reached for him, there had only been a slight surprise to Kisuke’s impulsive but fierce declaration of “you’re safe, now. It’s ok.” Ichigo had latched onto him, little face pressed to Kisuke’s neck and no one had been able to make him let go. 

The child had been asleep by the time they have made it to the 4th and Kisuke had left him in the care of Captain Unohana, Kaien, and his squad before returning to the lab with his own team. And what he had found them had been enough to both horrify him and disgust him. It had been his own research papers and thoughts, written by his own hands, that had been scattered around the lab. Kisuke was not an idiot, he knew what this could mean both to himself and to the child.

And although he would take whatever punishment the central 46 would dish out to him, he would do no such thing to a child who was innocent in this whole mess. A child who was innocent of all crimes but that the central 46 would seek to execute regardless, out of fear of the unknown. So Kisuke had taken his research with him, leaving the problem of figuring out how his own research had been stolen from under his nose for later and rushed back to the 4th. 

He had not expected to return and find the place in such disarray but as it turned out, the child had latched on to him as a source of comfort and waking up in an unfamiliar place without Kisuke anywhere near had been enough to send the boy into a panic. And so, young Ichigo had been in the middle of his latest attempts at a jailbreak when he had caught sight of Kisuke himself.

It had taken a lot of manoeuvring but at the end, Kisuke had been able to both carry the child and his research in the search for Captain Unohana and Lieutenant Shiba. And since then it had been practically impossible to get the child to let go of Kisuke. Between Unohana and Kisuke, armed with his research and her medical knowledge, they had come to the conclusion that said attachment was both a result of trauma and some sort of instinct embedded in the child’s hollow side. 

Whatever the reason, the child believed Kisuke to be his source of comfort and protection and he was in no hurry to lose it. Not that Kisuke could blame him. It had taken about a month of Kisuke doing his work from the 4th and Kaien visiting daily to get Ichigo comfortable enough with the man for Ichigo to agree to live with the Clan Head. Still, the central 46 had not been as easily convinced.

It had taken Kaien throwing all his support both as a lieutenant and as a clan head for them to back off of the idea of executing the child and exiling Kisuke. It didn’t hurt that Kaien had the support of his own captain and everyone knows that where the 13th’s captain goes, Kyoraku Shunsui soon follows. And there’s little chance of the Captain Commander turning against both his students. Not after Kisuke and Unohana had managed to explain the situation before the C46 could get to him.

Still, to both assuage the situation a little more, some concessions had to be made. One of them, apparently, was to be that Kisuke had the child every weekend until they could perform enough exams to both understand what was going on with him and corroborate that he wouldn’t be a danger to Soul Society. How Aizen had almost managed to convince them that he was a better option than Kisuke himself, Kisuke is not sure. 

It had been a combination of Kaien’s own political power, the intervention of the 0 division in the name of the Soul King and Kisuke’s reputation as a genius that had managed to stop that particular course of action. Aizen had tipped his hand, too. Kisuke couldn’t prove it yet but he was now sure that it had been the lieutenant who had somehow gotten his hands on Kisuke’s research.

Not that Kisuke could come forward with those accusations without some powerful evidence, Aizen is after all greatly beloved by his own division. Even if Kisuke is sure that his own captain suspects the man. Hirako is good but now that Kisuke has a reason to pay attention, it is rather obvious. And there’s still the matter of finding out how exactly the research was stolen, to begin with. 

There’s too much to do, a variety of questions left unanswered and yet… Although it needs to be done carefully, it also needs to be done as quickly as possible. It seems there has been a chess match going on, one with Kisuke as a part of it and Kisuke is ashamed to admit that he had not really noticed beyond some inconclusive suspicions. Still, he has not been defeated just yet, Kisuke can recover. 

Kisuke ends up not sleeping that night, there’s too much in his head for it to be a possibility. His own head going on in too many diverging lines of thought for rest to be given a chance. But the child is nestled by his side as Kisuke drinks his tea, purring away as Kisuke pets his hair and even as he doesn’t want to, it brings a smile to his face. It reminds him of kittens and although Kisuke will never tell her, he does miss the times when Yoruichi would do the same in her cat form.

But it’s been a while since Yoruichi had come to visit him and with all this mess to clean up, there will be a while longer until she has the time to do it again. That is, even if she wants to. More than likely, she’d be convinced to spend her time with that little apprentice of hers. Kisuke has convinced himself long ago that it doesn’t bother him anymore. 

The next day is spent investigating the situation with his stolen research with a small orange-haired shadow following him around. The kid soon learns that if he approaches the members of his squad loitering around, he gets candy and small knick-knacks to play with and so, he approaches mostly everyone. But never strays much from where Kisuke himself is. It’s both funny and adorable, how Ichigo demands attention to be given to him but scampers away with a hiss when he decides he no longer wants it. 

How offended he looks when attention he doesn’t even want anymore is not given to him... It makes the scientists in his squad and Kisuke himself snicker. They have grown a little overprotective of him, Kisuke knows. It’s not really an issue, especially when it means added protection against the machinations of the C46 and Aizen himself. Kisuke lets it warm him even as he continues with his investigation.

Still, there’s also the matter of his lieutenant to take care of. 

He understands, really, that Sarugaki doesn’t want him around. He also understands that it’s not a personal thing against him. To Sarugaki, in he came and replaced the old captain and therefore he is the one to blame for said captain abandoning Sarugaki. She’s just taking the anger and betrayal out on him because there’s no better target. 

Simple, if childish and incorrect logic. Kisuke would not have had the spot to apply to if said captain had not accepted the new position. Of course, Kisuke had not been cruel enough to point this out to her. He has been trying his hardest to be understanding, after all, this is his lieutenant and Kisuke knows what kind of relationship is supposed to be there. Still, he has been reaching the end of his rope and with this, he has to put his foot down. 

He can’t take care of little Ichigo, his captaincy and a reluctant if somewhat useful lieutenant. Of course, it’s not all her fault, some of the matters regarding the scientific side of his division are new to her and she is no scientist. It’s, however, hard to teach these matters to someone who is convinced you’re devil incarnate and has no desire to stand your presence anywhere near her. So he summons the girl to his office and ignores his orange-haired shadow. 

There’s not going to be enough persuasion powers to have the child wait outside of the office. Not if the way Ichigo has been determinedly clinging to his hand is any indication. So he sits down on his chair, ignoring the mess that is his desk and doesn’t even bother to fight the smile that wants to show up on his face when Ichigo sits on his lap like it’s his throne and Ichigo is its rightful ruler. 

It is, admittedly, adorable. Not that Kisuke is going to point that out just yet, the way the child has been using it to his advantage doesn’t really need much encouragement. Kisuke ignores the way Ichigo’s curious little hands worsen the mess, it’s not like Kisuke leaves the important documents on top of his desk anyway. It takes Sarugaki long enough to show up that Ichigo is contently curled in his lap, purring away and playing with one of Kisuke’s pens.

The investigation and the squad run smoother after that conversation. Matters are not all the way settled, not really, but at the very least they can now work together to get things done. Months go by in a haze of tests, paperwork and investigations. Kisuke is blaming the whole mess on exhaustion because at some point during the whole mess, he has come to expect a body pressed beside his on the futon, warm and purring.

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to sound mean but did this make you sad? Because it was supposed to and I'm trying to decide if it's working.


End file.
